Cider apple
Dunkerton’s Late
A very late Herefordshire bittersweet, greenish-yellow and hard, ripening after the main crop and giving a firm, useful tannin.
Also written Dunkertons Late, Dunkerton Late, Dunkerton’s Late Sweet.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Very late (November onwards)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Late season
- Origin
- Herefordshire
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
Long Ashton classification
Bittersweet
Low acid, high tannin. The class that has no real equivalent in dessert fruit and that defines West Country cider.
Basis: Below about 0.45% w/v acid and above about 0.2% w/v tannin.
A medium bittersweet despite the "Sweet" in its older name.
Every classification on CiderHQ names its system. Why there is more than one.
What it contributes to a blend
A direction, not a measurement. These bands are the level of resolution the evidence supports, and they say which way adding this fruit pushes a blend rather than what the finished cider will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Very low | |
| Tannin | Firm | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Noticeable | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Medium |
Long Ashton acid and tannin ranges for the cultivar.
Adds firm late-season tannin without much weight behind it.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Dunkerton’s Late, and for a great deal of cider fruit that is a finding rather than a gap. Bittersweet apples in particular contribute tannin, sugar and body while being close to aromatically mute, and most of what a cider made from them smells of was produced by the fermentation rather than carried in by the fruit. CiderHQ publishes the absence rather than filling the space with descriptors nothing supports.
Measured analysis
Each figure is shown with where and when it was taken. They are not averaged: the same cultivar grown in another climate genuinely gives different numbers, and collapsing them into one would be the most misleading thing this page could do.
Total acid0.120–0.220 % w/v
Long Ashton, Somerset, England, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985 · Titration of pressed juice, reported as malic acid · National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol
A Herefordshire fruit analysed on Somerset-grown material.
How much acid the juice contains, conventionally reported as malic acid. Measured in percent weight per volume.
Total tannin0.200–0.300 % w/v
Long Ashton, Somerset, England, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985 · National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol
Recorded as a range; the per-cultivar tables are unverified against the original station reports.
The phenolic fraction responsible for bitterness and astringency. Measured in percent weight per volume.
Compare within a study to see where these figures sat among the other cultivars the same work analysed — which is a more robust statement than the figures themselves, because absolute values move between laboratories and the ordering inside one study mostly survives.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Very late
- Flowering
- Pollination group 4
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
November. One of the latest Herefordshire cider apples.
Hard fruit that holds in store into winter.
Late-flowering.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
| Canker | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Low acid
- Firm tannin
- Very late availability
How it is used
- Late-season tannin in Three Counties blends
- Kept in store to allow winter pressing
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Neither concentrated nor balanced enough to work alone.
About Dunkerton’s Late
Dunkerton’s Late does what its name says. It ripens in November, keeps hard in store afterwards, and gives a mill something with tannin in it at a point in the year when the alternative is nothing. In Herefordshire, where the traditional pressing season ran long and cider was made through the winter, that was a genuinely useful property.
The juice is a straightforward medium bittersweet: low acid, firm tannin, modest sugar. It is not a fruit anyone seeks out for character. The older name Dunkerton Late Sweet is actively misleading, since the analysis places it above the tannin threshold and it does not taste sweet in any useful sense — an example of a folk name recording an impression rather than a measurement.
The surname coincidence with a well-known modern Herefordshire cider producer causes occasional confusion in search results and nothing more; the cultivar predates the company by a century.
Names, origin and identity
Cultivar naming is the hardest problem in cider fruit data. The same tree carries different names across ten miles, and two different trees have shared a name for two centuries.
Origin · traditional account
A Herefordshire cultivar carrying a family name from the county. Nothing about its raising is recorded, and the surname is shared with a later and unrelated cider producer.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Dunkerton Late Sweet | Historic spelling | An older form of the name; "Sweet" here is misleading, since the fruit is classified as a bittersweet. |
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Fruit that plays a similar part
Cultivars sharing a classification under the same system and a comparable role in a blend. Not a similarity score — a stated relationship.
Dabinett
The most widely planted English cider apple: a small, late-ripening bittersweet whose soft, full tannin ferments into a cider that needs almost nothing added to it.
Yarlington Mill
A vigorous Somerset bittersweet, conical and red-striped, giving a cider with more aromatic lift than most of its class and a reputation for fruitiness that the tannin figures do not explain.
Chisel Jersey
A hard, high-tannin Somerset bittersweet used in small proportion for structure, and one of the fruit most often reached for when a blend needs backbone rather than bulk.
Fréquin Rouge
A small, hard, deeply tannic Norman bitter apple that gives a French blend its grip, and the most widely planted member of a whole family of local Fréquins that are not all the same fruit.
Harry Masters’ Jersey
A medium bittersweet from the Yarlington district, valued for tannin that is full without being harsh, and among the more reliable croppers in a class that is generally unreliable.
Médaille d’Or
A small, russeted Norman bittersweet with exceptionally high tannin and sugar, famous in England out of all proportion to how much of it anyone has ever managed to grow.
Where it grows
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How do you blend cider
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- What are the three counties in cider — Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire — the block of country where England’s cider and, above all, its perry have historically concentrated.
- What is herefordshire cider
- Where are perry pears grown
- What is brown snout
Where to go next
- How cider apples are classified — Why there are four schemes and none of them is universal.
- The blend explorer — See which way changing the proportions moves a blend.
- Blending — What a cider maker is actually deciding when they build a blend.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses
National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol · research institute · registered as competent for this subject · covers 1903–2003
The foundational body of cider-fruit science in English. Long Ashton produced the acid-and-tannin classification that divides cider apples into sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp, and analysed hundreds of cultivars grown at its Somerset site. Its figures are historic measurements of specific fruit at a specific place, not universal constants — a distinction CiderHQ preserves in every measurement record that cites it.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.
University of Reading / Defra, Brogdale · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK national reference collection for apple and pear cultivars. The authority CiderHQ uses for whether two names are the same fruit, which is the central duplicate-resolution problem in cider data.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.